Failure Is Difficulty Dialled to 11
Or, how to use the difficulty
👋 Hey there! My name is Abhishek. Welcome to a new edition of The Sunday Wisdom! This is the best way to learn new things with the least amount of effort.
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Q: What is a good way to deal with failure?
All of us fail at some point. And, all of us have a tendency of saying, “It’s OK,” or “It doesn’t matter” whenever we fail. It’s a lie we tell ourselves to deal with the pain caused by failure. But it may not be the smartest way to deal with failure.
Big or small, failures do get to us. That’s why it hurts so much. In fact, failures hurt twice as much as successes feels great. Still, most of us haven’t really figured out a good way to deal with failure.
For starters, I think we should stop saying that it doesn’t matter, because it clearly does.
You need to empathise with yourself. If you feel depressed after failing at something important, it’s totally natural. It’s a time where you don’t want to be alone. Share your state of mind with someone. Hug a loved one. Cry your heart out if you have to. It’s only natural to be sad. What’s not natural (and, to some extent, stupid) is saying that it doesn’t matter.
Most people (in fact, all people) would prefer not to have any weaknesses. But, since that isn’t practically possible, they do the next best thing that can be done: remain in denial of their weaknesses.
They cannot be blamed. The world (especially our upbringing) has conditioned us to be embarrassed by weaknesses and failures. Naturally, we try to hide them. But surprisingly, people are happiest when they can be themselves.
Therefore, if we can be open with ourselves and our close confidantes — sharing not only our achievements but also our setbacks, our strengths alongside our vulnerabilities, our aspirations as well as our anxieties — we can experience a newfound sense of freedom. And when we no longer need to conceal anything, particularly from ourselves, we can not only wholeheartedly celebrate our successes but also more effectively navigate and cope with life’s challenges, receiving support from both within and from those around us.
Failure is a frequent stop in the road to greatness. If you can learn to reflect on it, rather than run away from it, it’ll only lead to rapid learning.
Rapid learning is essential, especially if you don’t want to repeat the same kinds of mistakes, behaviours, decisions, and patterns that lead to failure in the first place. You want new ways to fail, not fail the same way over and over again.
In a 2002 interview, renowned actor Michael Caine recounts an episode from his early years as an actor during a stage play rehearsal.
Caine was waiting behind the door of a set on stage as two actors playing husband and wife improvised a scene. Getting carried away, the couple started throwing things at each other. Caine went to open the door, but he found it jammed with a chair.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Caine. “I can’t get in.”
“What do you mean?” the other actor asked.
“There’s a chair there,” Caine explained.
“Use the difficulty!” The actor exclaimed.
“What do you mean?” Caine asked, confused.
“Well, if it’s a comedy, fall over it. If it’s a drama, pick it up and smash it. Use the difficulty.”
Caine took that advice seriously, using it throughout his life.
“You ask my children,” Caine relates. “Anything bad happens, they go, ‘We’ve got to use the difficulty. How can we work this? What can we get out of this?’ Use the difficulty.”
Use the difficulty — I like that mental model. I think failure is just the highest form of difficulty. We can learn to use it if we try.
All that said, it’s definitely not the easiest thing to do. But once you make it into a habit, and you start seeing how much more effective you can be by analysing painful realities, you most likely won’t want to operate in any other way.
The human being is the only animal bestowed with the power of self-reflection — which means that we can think deeply and weigh subtle things to come up with learning and wise choices. Let‘s start using that to our advantage.
Ask yourself about the root causes of your pain. Asking other people is also very helpful — especially those who have opposing views but share the same interest.
The good thing is that if you can reflect deeply upon your problems, they almost always shrink or disappear, because you almost always find a better way of dealing with them than if you don’t face them head-on.
Michael Caine ends with a beautiful line that I really love: “There’s never anything so bad that you cannot use that difficulty. If you can use it a quarter of 1 percent to your advantage, you’re ahead. You didn’t let it get you down.”
Failure is just difficulty dialled to 11. Use the difficulty.
What I’m Reading
Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. Everyone knows that exercise is good for our health. However, it can also transform our mind. SPARK by Dr. John J. Ratey is based on scientific research and teaches us how exercise is truly our best defence against everything from depression to ADD to addiction to aggression to menopause to Alzheimer's. A great read that would inspire you to live an active lifestyle.
From the Internet
The Work You Do, The Person You Are. “I have worked for all sorts of people since then, geniuses and morons, quick-witted and dull, bighearted and narrow. I’ve had many kinds of jobs, but since that conversation with my father I have never considered the level of labour to be the measure of myself, and I have never placed the security of a job above the value of home.”
What If Everything You Knew About Disciplining Kids Was Wrong? “Will was “that kid.” Every school has a few of them: that kid who’s always getting into trouble, if not causing it. That kid who can’t stay in his seat and has angry outbursts and can make a teacher’s life hell. That kid the other kids blame for a recess tussle. Will knew he was that kid too. Ever since first grade, he’d been coming to school anxious, defensive, and braced for the next confrontation with a classmate or teacher.”
Tiny Thought
“Most people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing. They imitate others, go with the flow, and follow paths without making their own.”
— Derek Sivers, Anything You Want
Before You Go…
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I’ll see you next Sunday,
Abhishek 👋